Hogarth's Modern Moral Series: The Rake's Progress When Hogarth embarked on his second Progress in 1733, ‘the rake’ was a long established symbol of masculine waywardness and depravity. An inveterate consumer and ‘man of leisure’, the rake of convention fritters his fortune, usually inherited, on sex, drink and gambling. Along the way he amasses huge debts and seduces, impregnates and abandons at least one young woman. As with the prostitute, a literary convention had developed in which the rake starts life as an impressionable young man from the country who comes to the city after inheriting money and swiftly embarks on a dissolute life. His fate typically involved venereal disease, debtor’s prison and death.
Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study. As well, we believe that a cinephilic understanding of the moving image provides the necessary basis for a radical critique of other media and of the global “image culture”.